Glipper is a very handy tool to have in your toolbox. It maintains a clipboard history of everything that you’ve copied. So say I copied something from CNET.com and also copied some text from ubuntu.com – with Glipper I can easily insert both copied text. Normally the latter material that was copied would have overwritten the former but a clipboard history solves this problem. Some Ubuntu users might also cringe at the fact the clipboard is cleared everytime an application is closed. So if I copied a URL from Firefox, and wanted to paste it into gedit, but closed Firefox, my copied URL is now gone because the clipboard was cleared. Glipper maintains all of your copies so you don’t have to worry about these little quirks anymore. Glipper is in the universe so you can search for it in Synaptic and install or if you’re a term kind of guy like me:

After reading Mohammad’s blog post about Google Desktop, I thought I’d take it for a spin since I’m a GDS fan when I’m on XP. Though I’ve only been using it for two days, I soon realized that I am going back to Tracker. Here’s why:

1. Memory Footprint

GDS is costing me 50MB+ for the search utility, the indexing process, and the tray icon. Tracker peaks at about 4MB for me – and that includes the indexing process.

2. No Deskbar Integration

With tracker I can integrate it into my deskbar. I can launch apps, search the web/desktop, and run system level commands from one place. GDS is limited to only searching the web/desktop, so as a power user I’m still stuck using 2 applications, when I can be using one integrated solution. I hope in the future we will be able to integrate GDS into the Deskbar, but it seems unlikely since GDS is a closed-source binary.

3. Firefox Results

GDS displays search results in Firefox. Though this is nice, we all know that FF isn’t the fastest loading application in our toolbox. Tracker has its own native GTK+ search window which loads up a lot quicker.

One thing I will note however – GDS is blazing fast. It picks up search results as I type, faster than Tracker. The speed difference isn’t enough to outweigh its large memory footprint though. I am indexing my root folder which is the culprit for GDS eating up my memory, but if Tracker can do it efficiently, I expect the boys at Google to do so as well =).

Feisty Fawn doesn’t really give you any options when it comes to customizing how you want Compiz to work. You get fading, and wobbly windows, but there is so much more you can tweak. GL Desktop is a configuration manager for Compiz that unleashes a lot more functionality. Think of it as a Beryl-Manager for you Beryl folks. You can choose between a rotating cube, or sliding planes when you switch between workspaces, enable mouse-driven zooming, make your desktop rain, and perform desktop annotations just to name a few options.

GL-Desktop is in the universal repository so installation is as easy as:

“sudo apt-get install gnome-compiz-manager”

Once installed it should appear under System > Preferences > GL Desktop